Poll: Question about links: picture or text?

[Almgandi]

A friend of mine is trying to design his own website and I am trying to help him with some decisions. Currently he is trying to set up links to other sections of the website (it's basically a page showing all the categories of a subcategory i.e. subcategory colours----> categories: blue red green etc.) The problem is that neither he or I know if it would be better to:

1)only add pictures and assume that people will click on those pictures

2) add pictures with descriptions below them which ,however, won't have links (the program adds lines whenever you do that) meaning that you still have to click on the link .

We basically want that anybody who visits the site can easily find the links but also knows what every category is about.

I'd appreciate anybody's opinion on the subject

 

[Quaxar]

Can't you add the text into the bottom of the picture, if you know what I mean, instead of actually doing a descriptive text below it? Something like the Escapist does with the social network buttons at the top.
This would also let you do more text design so it integrates better.